Gerald Kaufman

Gerald Bernard Kaufman was born on 21 June 1930 to Louis and Jane Kaufman, Polish Jewish immigrants living in Britain.[5][1] He grew up in Leeds, attended local council schools and Leeds Grammar School, and studied at Queen’s College, Oxford.[5] His upbringing was Orthodox Jewish and Zionist.[4]

Kaufman began his political and journalistic career before entering Parliament, serving as assistant general secretary of the Fabian Society in 1954–55.[5] He worked on the political staff of the Daily Mirror from 1955 to 1964, moved to the New Statesman for 1964–65, and then became Labour prime minister Harold Wilson’s parliamentary press liaison officer, a position he held from 1965 to 1970.[5]

His first attempts to enter Parliament were unsuccessful: he contested Bromley in 1955 and Gillingham in 1959.[5] On 18 June 1970, he won Manchester Ardwick, beginning a parliamentary career representing Manchester constituents that continued until his death.[5][1] When Ardwick was merged into Manchester Gorton in 1983, he contested and won the new seat.[5] He was re-elected in 2015 and was Britain’s oldest serving MP when he died.[1]

During Labour’s governments of 1974–79, Kaufman held a succession of junior ministerial posts.[5] He was parliamentary under-secretary at the Department of the Environment from March 1974 to June 1975, under-secretary at the Department of Industry from June to December 1975, and minister of state at Industry from December 1975 to May 1979.[5] He became a privy councillor in 1978.[5]

After Labour entered opposition in 1979, Kaufman served as its environment spokesman until 1983 and was elected to the Shadow Cabinet in 1980.[5] He subsequently served as shadow home secretary from 1983 to 1987 and shadow foreign secretary from 1987 to 1992.[2] His foreign-policy role brought him into contact with visiting American legislators: a report of a 1988 visit to London lists him among those met and identifies him as Labour’s foreign-policy spokesman, although it does not give the date of the individual meeting.[6]

In 1990, Kaufman proposed that wealthy nations devise a “Marshall Plan” to assist the new democracies of Eastern Europe.[5] He argued that the West should support change rather than instigate it; some Labour rank-and-file members considered the proposal insufficiently ambitious for the party’s shadow foreign secretary.[5] He resigned as shadow foreign secretary in June 1992.[5]

In the mid-1990s, Kaufman chaired the House of Commons National Heritage Select Committee, which published reports on the British film industry and public ownership of the lottery.[5] After Labour returned to government in 1997, he remained a backbench MP rather than returning to ministerial office.[2] He received a knighthood in 2004.[2]

Kaufman’s writing accompanied his parliamentary career.[5] His political publications included How To Live Under Labour, written with a co-author in 1964; The Left, published in 1966; To Build a Promised Land, published in 1973; How To Be a Minister, published in 1980; and Renewal: Labour’s Britain in the 1980s, published in 1983.[5] My Life in the Silver Screen, published in 1985, reflected his interest in film.[5]

He also travelled repeatedly to Israel and wrote Inside the Promised Land, published in 1986, about those visits.[2] The book included conversations about Israeli society and politics, and he expressed the view that “love of country” would remain Israel’s salvation.[5] His later criticism of Israeli policies toward Palestinians became particularly outspoken after the fall of the Barak government.[2]

Kaufman died in February 2017, aged 86, after several months of an undisclosed illness.[1] Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called him an “iconic and irascible figure” within the party, while former leader Ed Miliband described him as an “outstanding servant of the Labour movement.”[1] His family said that he had dedicated his life to serving those whom they believed would benefit most from a Labour government.[1]

An archival record of his working life survives in engagement diaries covering 1954–2003.[3] These were listed among the Churchill Archives Centre’s 2006 accessions under the name Sir Gerald Bernard Kaufman and the archive reference KAUF.[3]

Kaufman’s rhetoric attracted criticism on subjects ranging from South Africa to Israel and Jewish political influence.[5][1] In a 1988 Commons speech, he called Margaret Thatcher “the handmaiden of apartheid” and “the world’s most effective ally of apartheid”; the speech drew criticism for creating an impression that he was not taking South Africa’s problems seriously.[5] In a September 1994 article opposing an eruv in north-west London, he argued that it risked encouraging isolation from wider society, while also maintaining that religious and ethnic minorities should be helped to preserve their identities.[7]

During Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, Kaufman called Israel an “international pariah,” accused Ariel Sharon of ordering “methods of barbarism against the Palestinians,” and said Sharon’s government was staining the Star of David with blood.[1] He advocated South Africa-style economic sanctions in 2004 and called Israel a “rogue state” in 2012, arguing that Israeli voters shared responsibility for their government’s alleged war crimes.[1] His criticism drew a strong negative response from Manchester’s Jewish community.[2]

In a parliamentary speech during the 2009 Israel–Hamas war, Kaufman accused Israel’s government of exploiting Holocaust guilt and compared Israeli army statements with Nazi speech.[1] Invoking his account of his grandmother’s murder by a German soldier, he declared: “My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.”[4] He also likened Hamas fighters to Jews fighting in the Warsaw ghetto, while calling Hamas a “deeply nasty organization” with which Israel nevertheless needed to talk.[1][4] Israeli Embassy spokesman Lior Ben Dor rejected the comparison, saying Israeli soldiers were defending themselves against enemies like those who had victimized Kaufman’s grandmother.[4]

At a Friends of Al Aqsa meeting in Parliament on 23 March 2010, Kaufman said that “right-wing Jewish millionaires” owned part of the Conservative Party; he did not apologize when subsequently asked to do so.[8] He did apologize in 2011 for saying “Here we are, the Jews again” during an Israel debate involving another Jewish lawmaker who disagreed with him.[9] Further remarks attributed to him at an October 2015 Palestinian Return Centre meeting alleged that “Jewish money, Jewish donations” influenced Conservative support for Israel.[10] They prompted demands for a Labour investigation and clarification from Jewish communal organizations, whose representatives criticized the party’s response as inadequate.[10]

In July 2014, Kaufman described the suspected killers of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir as “Israeli terrorists” and called for justice and sympathy for the family.[11] Commons Leader Andrew Lansley condemned the abduction and murder of both Israeli and Palestinian teenagers; Conservative MP Robert Halfon objected that Kaufman’s wording implied a conclusion about the perpetrators for which, at that point, there was no evidence.[11]